


Now He Knows

by Deannie



Series: Writ in Remembrance [2]
Category: The Magnificent Seven (TV)
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-09
Updated: 2014-06-09
Packaged: 2018-02-04 01:12:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,581
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1761507
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Deannie/pseuds/Deannie
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>An answer to one of Farad's challenges on fic_promptly over at dreamwidth: "Magnificent Seven, OW, any/all, it was the guilt that held them together."</p><p>Vin gets an insight into Chris and Buck that he never wanted to.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Now He Knows

**Author's Note:**

> This is a sort of "other scene" (rather than a missing scene) for my story "Because You Are Nine." It isn't necessary for you to read that one, but it'd make me feel all shiny inside :).
> 
> Takes place on Adam's birthday, four months after the pilot. BEFORE Nemesis (that's important)

Vin was worried. He could see the rest of them were, too. It had only been four months since the seven of them had thrown in together and started to build some sort of bizarre family, and he had a dreaded feeling that it was all going to unravel tonight. 

Ezra was holding his usual game at his usual table, back to the wall with a clear view of the peacekeepers’ table across the way. His face was smooth and his expression unconcerned, but Vin could see in his eyes that Ezra suspected what was going on behind Chris’s eyes. 

Vin figured it too, and wondered whether Chris was remembering his son’s birth or the anniversary of his wife’s. 

Josiah sat next to the gambler, playing distractedly, obviously trying to puzzle out his friend's behavior. He looked sad and compassionate and pained all at once. 

Nathan and JD leaned against the bar, Nathan’s eyes on Chris, a faint gleam of righteous disgust in them. Vin ignored it. Nathan was a good soul, but sometimes he just couldn’t credit that every man dealt with his pain in a different way. As good a man as he was too, Chris Larabee had a piss poor way of dealing with his demons. 

JD cast a disappointed, disbelieving look at Larabee every now and again, but mostly his eyes were on another table altogether. Buck sat by himself, having waved JD off earlier in the night. He wasn’t drinking with Chris’s intensity, but he was making headway into his bottle of rotgut just the same. Vin didn't know much about the circumstances of Chris's family's death, but he knew that Buck had been like family, too. He had to be hurting. 

Chris was crawling so far down deep into his third bottle that Vin was wondering whether he’d just up and die from alcohol sickness and have done with it, as he clearly seemed to want to. Chris could be a mean everything, but the meanest drunk—and no matter how little Vin agreed with the man’s choice of painkiller, he’d sit with him and make sure he didn’t kill anyone out of spite or whiskey-fueled stupidity. 

He didn’t bother to wonder why Buck wasn’t doing the same, though bits and fragments he'd heard led him to believe that Buck had been taking care of Chris for a while now. Vin wasn’t sure if it was the fact that there were other people to help carry the burden now, or whether it was that Buck was just too damn tired of it after more than three years of scraping Chris off the floor. All he knew was that Buck was looking for someone else to take the reins and lead Chris back to sanity. He had his own road to travel tonight. 

Unfortunately, Chris wasn’t having any of it. 

“What’s the matter, Buck?” he slurred as the night turned old and the saloon started to empty out. “Figured you’d’ve found a good piece of tail to bed down with. It’s what you do, right?” 

Buck drained his shot glass and didn’t bother to look at Chris at all, instead staring sightlessly out into the darkness. “All due respect, Chris,” he said quietly, sounding stone cold sober after half a bottle, “you can go straight to hell.” 

Chris leered in that way that reinforced the words Vin knew he was gonna say. 

“Shit, Buck, I’m already there. Figured you knew that.” 

Buck finally responded to the challenge in his friend’s voice and met Larabee’s eyes with a coldness Vin had never seen. Buck shoved to his feet and Chris followed, much more gracelessly. Vin noticed Nathan and JD tense in their places and Ezra quietly shut down his game as Josiah ushered people out. 

Vin didn’t know what Buck was playing at or why things were running out of control so fast, but he was baiting Chris, and that was only gonna end in violence. 

“Then what the fuck’re you doing around here, Larabee?” Buck murmured, hand sitting calm on his gun. 

Chris stumbled across the space between them, getting right up in Buck’s face. 

“Well, now, I could go home,” Chris grated. “But then I ain’t got one of those anymore. Do I, Buck?” 

Vin watched them both, seeing Nathan hold JD back. This fight felt like it had been years in the coming, somehow. Maybe whatever was between them now would lance the boil. If they didn’t kill each other first. 

“There was nothing—” Buck began, clearly stopping himself from taking part in a well-worn argument. “You know what, Chris? Fuck it. You keep doing whatever the hell it is you do.” He drained a third of the bottle in one go. “Sure as hell ain’t been able to stop you before.” 

Chris put his own hand to his gun as Buck started to walk away and Vin tensed. No matter how drunk or how mean Chris got, Vin’d never been afraid he was actually going to shoot one of them before. 

He was now. 

“Tried to be done with you years ago, you son of a bitch!” Chris growled. He was frighteningly still and cold, and Vin knew if he drew, he wouldn’t miss. 

Everyone froze in shock as Buck spun around, angry and defiant and so damn guilty it hurt to see. What the hell…? 

“So what’re you gonna do, Chris!?” he yelled. “Shoot me again?” A tear escaped his eye and he looked like his whole world had narrowed down to Chris and only Chris. “Christ, Larabee, I can’t apologize any more! I can’t change it! I loved them, too! Fuck, if I could go back—” 

“But you can’t!” Chris screamed, striding up to him, getting back in his face. “You _can’t_! If I’d’ve just _left_ instead of letting you chase one more tail!” 

Buck shook his head with a mad fire in his eyes and grabbed Chris’s hand, cocking his own gun and shoving it into the other man’s open palm. Vin felt the other peacekeepers draw their guns while his mare’s leg pointed straight at Buck’s barrel. He’d shoot to hit the gun, but he knew, at this range, he’d likely take half of Chris’s hand with it. 

“Then do it, Larabee,” Buck whispered. Vin cursed and lowered his rifle to point at the ground as Buck set his weapon to point at his own heart. Left his hand on the barrel. “Jesus Christ, just do it. Stop torturing the both of us.” 

Chris’s finger had never even touched the trigger and his eyes filled with tears as he let go of the stock. Buck wasn’t prepared for the move and the gun fell to the ground. Vin thanked Josiah’s God that the damn thing didn’t go off on impact. 

“Why the hell do you stay, Buck?” Chris whispered, looking at Buck in stunned surprise. “Why don’t you just leave me the hell alone?” 

He stumbled out of the saloon, and Vin was too frozen in shock to follow him. He only had eyes for Buck, who stood, devastated, staring at the gun on the ground as if wishing it had done its duty. Vin felt someone slide out into the darkness and hoped whoever it was—had to be Nathan or Josiah or Ezra, ‘cause JD’d never leave Buck—was prepared to make sure Chris didn’t do anything stupid. 

Vin understood now. He hadn't known exactly what happened the week Sarah and Adam died. Chris had told him they’d decided to stay one more night after dropping off the horses. Buck had said _he’d_ decided, though, and now Vin knew what that meant. Vin _didn’t_ know what Buck had meant about Chris shooting him again, and he wasn’t sure he wanted to. 

But in the end, it didn’t matter. He knew the root truth here and it burned. 

Guilt held these two together. Buck’s guilt kept him coming back, and Chris’s guilt kept Buck paying his penance. 

Jesus. Vin wondered if even finding the assholes responsible would cure the guilt swarming around them. 

“Buck?” 

JD sounded lost and cold and lonely. Vin watched as Buck fought not to lash out at the kid—not to be Larabee. 

“I’ll see you later, JD,” he whispered, headed for the door. “Ain’t fit company just now.” 

Vin finally looked up, seeing Nathan standing next to JD and Josiah watching out the window as Buck retreated. Vin was getting to like Ezra, and hoped the guy didn’t end up dead. Larabee sure as hell wanted someone to. 

“Think one of us should go after him?” JD asked. “I know he said—” 

“Leave him be,” Nathan counseled, the cold disapproval gone from his eyes now, the brown depths filled with compassion. “Seems like he’s got a lot to think about.” 

Shit, that was one of those understatements Ezra was always talking about. 

Vin was worried all over again suddenly. Scared. He was only just getting to know this crew of men—this group that Josiah said was bound by destiny. He didn’t want to lose it now… 

“It’ll work out,” Josiah murmured, nodding to Vin as the tracker sidled up next to him to see Buck walking safely into the boarding house. “Seems they’ve been playing this game a long time.” 

A game? Hell, this was them gladiators in those lion pits. Vin felt a chill in the warm night. 

“Better hope neither of them’s ready to fold, preacher,” he whispered. 

* * * * *  
The End

**Author's Note:**

> I know, I know—so many unanswered questions! That's life, my dears!


End file.
